As if bullfighting wasn’t polarising enough, one of Spain’s most celebrated toreroshas provoked a social media storm after posting a photo in which he is fighting a bull while holding his five-month-old.

Francisco ‘Fran’ River Ordóñez, a popular bullfighter in Spain who was awarded the Fine Arts medal by the Culture Ministry in 2009, posted a photo on Instagram yesterday in which he stands to the side of a bull, holding, in one hand, the traditional red cloth of the bullfighter and, in the other, his daughter Carmen.

El Mundo reports that Spanish social media is talking of ‘nothing else’, and the incident has reignited the fierce debate that always surrounds bullfighting, which is banned in Catalonia and the Canary Islands, and might, some say, have been banned in other regions were it not for cultural heritage law.

One ‘anti-bullfighting’ Twitter user said that even putting aside her views, Rivera ‘had crossed the line just for putting his daughter in danger.’

Rivera, who suffered a 25cm goring in the abdomen last summer, belongs to a long line of bullfighters and explained his father had taken a similar photo with him when he was a boy.